La Gran Tetada / Big Latch On 2021 Recap

August is World Breastfeeding Month (WBM) and World Breastfeeding Week is celebrated August 1-7, 2021. BBC celebrates every year with the Big Latch On, as does most of the world.

The BBC has participated in the Big Latch On for 12 years now, and this was the second virtual event.

During the first year of the pandemic, 2020, BBC participated in a Facebook event featuring testimonial videos in conjunction with American Heart Association to promote breastfeeding and celebrate.

This year, 2021, WBM was celebrated with a live virtual event on August 2. This year’s event is the second time BBC has joined with NaSer and La Secretaria de Salud in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to make it the biggest one so far. La Gran Tetada / The Big Latch On reached 3 states and 2 countries. The states were Chihuahua, Texas, and New Mexico and the two countries US and Mexico to create a truly binational event. New Mexico Breastfeeding Task Force, Naser, Secretaria de Salud and The Binational Breastfeeding Coalition collaborated to make this event spectacular.

Participants were asked to register prior to the event and many activities were planned for that day. Our Master of Ceremony was Marisol from Luna Tierra Birth Center. We had 70 participants from as far away as Guanajuato, Mexico. Everyone was invited to feed their babies for that one designated minute simultaneously, there was a genuine effort made for total inclusion for all methods of infant feeding of human milk. New Mexico, presented a wonderful short video and were responsible for the Breastfeeding Bingo which was a great hit. We had interviews with representatives from the three organizations along with videos.

We had 163 preregistered and 70 participated in the live event. It is interesting to note that there were several women breastfeeding more than 1 child, some were feeding their babies breastmilk in a bottle and there were quite a few breastfeeders over 1 year of age. We had participants from Roswell, Houston, Weslaco Tx., Albuquerque, El Paso and the majority were from Ciudad Juárez.